When I look out 10 years, I see businesses prospering by treating people like people.

Trusting people changes EVERYTHING.

Expect to see a whole lot of curation goin' on. Please join me on my journey.

This topic began with an exploration of well-being and happiness as I learned about them. My particular interest has been well-being in the workplace. Increasing it is both humane and, I'm convinced, profitable.

This material will remain underfoot, deeper and deeper down in the archives.

Teachers need tools and support to be effective in their work and maintain emotional well-being.

Jay Cross's insight:

"What then, is mindfulness? Mindfulness is the capacity to attend to present moment experience in a receptive and open manner. It is a training in self-awareness and self-regulation. You learn thathow you attend to present moment - the quality of your attention and the attitude of your mind - has a deep impact on your experience. Importantly, these habits of attention are malleable - you can train yourself in ways that make a genuine difference in your personal and professional life."

Two types of virtues. 1. résumé virtues -- what you can do and 2. eulogy virtues -- what you've become. Eulogy virtues trump résumé virtues, just as explicit information is more valuable than tacit information.

A sociologist from UC Berkeley breaks down five simple things research shows will make you happy.

Jay Cross's insight:

Christine Carter has a different formula for achieving happiness. These steps sound like Working Smarter to me.

Take Recess: Going two days without anything fun creates anxiety. Take breaks.Switch Autopilot On: Make unpleasant tasks into habits. Tie them to things you already do.Unshackle Yourself: Decide your five priorities for the day and say NO to everything else. Does it have to be done? Do you have to do it? Does it have to be done perfectly? Does it have to be done now? Probably not.Cultivate Relationships: They are the single biggest happiness booster. Celebrate the successes of those you love.Tolerate Some Discomfort: Push to keep getting better. Mastery brings joy. Striving creates smiles.

How to get attention. Includes link to Bluma Zeigarnik's findings: "In consequence the recall-value of interrupted tasks is higher than the general average." Here's the short version: If you want to remember something, don't finish it. Give someone a diploma and they immediately begin letting go of what they had learned. Present people with challenges, not finished solutions, if you want them to learn.

"There is no shortage of people in this world who need our help. The problem is we are often too busy to notice because we have defined success in all the wrong places."

"But once we stop chasing bigger houses, faster cars, and cooler toys, we begin to notice again the needs around us.

Generous people dream big dreams for their money, time, talents, and experience. They realize that once our most basic needs are met, increased accumulation offers very little happiness. Instead, our resources can be used to make our communities safer, smarter, and more responsible. They can be used to make this world a little more pleasant for everyone.

And in this pursuit, they find true, lasting, immeasurable success."

I'm running out of excuses for why I shouldn't be doing more to help those in need.

At age 13, I had my first breakup, and my fears and codependent patterns had already hatched. My parents' version of therapy was putting me into a Shambhala Training program, where I was supposed to

Jay Cross's insight:

"Meditation is no longer a passive practice where we isolate ourselves from society and go to a hilltop to sit for days, weeks or years; meditation is the most powerful vehicle for taking action in the world. Action backed with love carries more strength than millions acting from a place of fear."

"The time is now. We must all take responsibility to discover our truth and bring the beauty of it out into the world. We are the ones we've been waiting for."

Is your creativity at a lull? Two neuroscientists have come up with a scientific formula for inspiration.

Jay Cross's insight:

"Their book, The Eureka Factor, explores the influences at work behind that much sought-after "Aha!" moment. Research suggests that in trying to conjure up inspiration, most of us end up suppressing it. The book explains how to clear out mental junk, in order to make way for pivotal revelations.

Prof Kounios explained: "Insights involve unusual connections. Cognitive psychologists call these "remote associations." They are processed mostly in the brain's right hemisphere. Insights occur when a subconscious remote association suddenly pops into awareness. This is accompanied by a burst of activity in the brain's right temporal lobe."

This is the same phenomenon Mark Granovetter found among job seekers. Leads came not from friends in one's immediate circle, but from friends of friends in more exotic circles. He called it the Strength of Weak Ties.

The old paradigm of leadership viewing employees as objects to maximize, with long, grueling schedules and few breaks is shifting.

Jay Cross's insight:

Mindful at work. Still controversial. Donald Clark dismisses it as a fad. I don't think so.

"Aetna implemented with hundreds of thousands of their employees to introduce a mindfulness and gentle yoga practice.

After 10 weeks, the self-reported stress levels went down for these employees, and; perhaps even more fascinating, biometric measurements like heart rate and cortisol went down too, demonstrating that the effects weren’t merely psychosomatic. Other benefits reported include improved sleep quality, reduced pain levels, and higher productivity."

I'm interested in the superior thinking and sense of well-being that result, but the reduction in stress-related healthcare costs is what's taking it to the troops.

Being mindful will definitely make it into my new book, Learn for Yourself.

From Stanford's Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education comes these practices for caring teams.

Increase positive emotions which broaden employees’ resources and abilities by improving people’s relationships with each other and amplifying their creativity and ability to think creatively.Buffer against negative events like stress, improving employees ability to bounce back from challenges and difficulties.Attract and bolster employees, making them more loyal and bringing out the best in them.

Positive emotions pay back in productivity gains.

What to do:

Caring for, being interested in, and maintaining responsibility for colleagues as friends.Providing support for one another, including offering kindness and compassion when others are struggling.Avoiding blame and forgive mistakes.Inspiring one another at work.Emphasizing the meaningfulness of the work.Treating one another with respect, gratitude, trust & integrity.

I think it’s important to stress that people should not give advice to each other in peer coaching (as in coaching a client), and that offering to listen and to witness the other person’s experience is a gift in itself. Also, I think that peer coaches can/should be less assertive with the questions of accountability, i.e. What exactly will you do and when will you do this? They are our peers, not our coaches (smile). Perhaps a question such as: How can I help you as an accountability partner? Or: How can I help you be accountable for your decisions? Thanks to June Holley for sending this article.

Depression comes in several forms. For example, I had "Atypical Depression." That means I respond to circumstances. An Atypical Depressed person laughs at jokes; a melancholic depressed person does not. Wikipedia says "Atypical depression also features significant weight gain or an increased appetite, hypersomnia, a heavy sensation in the limbs and interpersonal rejection sensitivity that results in significant social or occupational impairment."

A pioneer in mindfulness research says that companies can promote innovation and their own rejuvenation by setting the right context.

Jay Cross's insight:

25th anniversary of Ellen Langer's Mindfulness. She feels it's good for business. Some quotes:

As many business leaders know, mindfulness is gathering momentum as a management practice. Conferences such as Wisdom 2.0, and companies such as Google, are making a clear case that more deliberate awareness leads to stronger performance and better decision making. Often, this improvement is linked to meditation practice. But other forms of mindfulness are also prominent in the business world today, including the simple concept of “being here now”—holding an open frame of mind, avoiding the complacent arrogance that comes from the “illusion of certainty,” as Langer calls it.

That’s because people at the top of the hierarchy tend to assume that people at the lower levels don’t know much. But that turns out to be incorrect. When you level the hierarchy a bit, and everyone is mindful and encouraged to do their own thing, you end up with superior coordinated activity. Not chaos. Employees feel cared for, valued.

The leaders have to recognize that everything people do makes sense from their perspective, and that everyone can provide value in the right context. Someone who seems rigid is actually someone you can count on, somebody stable. If she seems impulsive, she’s spontaneous. If he seems gullible, he also promotes trust and candor.

If you’re a leader, once you recognize this, not only do you end up with more respect for people, but you see how they add value. Then if you value them more, they’ll work harder and enjoy it more. They’ll need fewer days off, there will be fewer accidents, healthcare costs will come down. And your company will make more money.

A new study by academics from the School of Psychology and Exercise Science at Murdoch University and Ludwig Maximilian University could help to make you happier at work.

Jay Cross's insight:

""Companies like Facebook and Google are examples of workplaces that already take a holistic approach to their employees' wellbeing. Studies have shown that these methods lead to increased productivity and a higher return for a firm's investment in their employees. They in turn are more loyal, more motivated and more willing to give something back."

The Global Peter Drucker Forum 2013 suggested a new a center of gravity for management in the world, as thought leaders explored the implications of complexity

Jay Cross's insight:

Steve writes that "The most important thing that would have struck Peter Drucker is the shared passion for the importance of management. Management is often seen as a boring dreary subject. What was striking was that everyone here shares a passion for the transformation of leadership and management in organizations and is working towards that goal. Everyone here cares about management. We believe that management matters. We know that management affects more lives more profoundly than anything else our species does.

"Peter Drucker would see the fact that only 11 percent of the workforce is passionate about their work as nothing less than a human tragedy. Is this the best the human race can do?

He would also have endorsed Doris Drucker’s thought that the so-called Information Revolution is not really about information or even communication. It’s a much bigger idea. It’s about human behavior and human values."

"He would also have been struck by the common ground among people with very different backgrounds and different generations. He might say that we have validated some old truths and we have learned something, even if, as Richard Straub and Julia Kirby pointed out, we have often discovered how to formulate better questions than to give better answers. We have identified the key challenges ahead and we have pointed to a way forward."

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